


130 Prompts #19 - Open Your Eyes

by FountainPenguin



Series: Blue Train [5]
Category: Fairly OddParents
Genre: Bat people, Gen, Magical creature biology, Pixies, Wasp people, anti-fairies - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2019-07-01 15:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15776745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FountainPenguin/pseuds/FountainPenguin
Summary: H.P. and Anti-Cosmo begin to panic when they realize that the newborn baby they've kidnapped is having some breathing problems related to magic deprivation.





	130 Prompts #19 - Open Your Eyes

**19\. Open Your Eyes**  ("Fairly Odd Baby")

_Year of Soil; Winter of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

As its lashes fluttered, he clasped his hands and asked, "Well? So do you think it's a drake or a damsel?"

"From the contour of the cheeks and the thick lashes, it looks to be a damsel. But then, I'm not used to faces so round, so I may be mistaken and I request that you don't hold it against me."

"A damsel?  _Rrr_ eally? Perhaps we had better check."

"Would you like me to take it outside where the light is better?" H.P. drawled, sarcasm edging every consonant.

Anti-Cosmo glanced around his dusty castle as he led the way from one gothic stone passage to the next. "It is, actually."

"Then if you really want to, you can." The Head Pixie handed the purple fairy baby, which had been playing with his glasses, over to one of the six or seven pixies that had been tailing them (For the longest time now, they'd been squabbling with several of his Anti-Fairies over the fact that their cell phones didn't work on this side of the Divide, and they clearly weren't happy with switching to wands of polished stone instead of pixie metal or even fairy wood). That pixie then passed the baby along to Anti-Cosmo, and it opened its eyes and turned its attention instantly to his monocle.

"Please don't drop that, little one," he muttered to it as he brought the infant nearer one of the torches tucked in a wall sconce. "Anti-Fairies can't entirely see glass, you know, and on this stone floor in particular with all its many grooves, it will be a  _rrr_ oyal pain to crawl about until I land a lucky hit. Oh." He looked back over his shoulder and, when the Head Pixie lifted one eyebrow, held up Fairy-Cosmo and Fairy-Wanda's baby again. "I've never seen, erm… reproductive characteristics like this before. Are you able to make out what it is? No- on second thought, don't tell me. I want it to be a surprise, at least for a little longer. But is that normal?"

"All members of the Seelie Court with its sex look like that," was H.P.'s patient reply. "You're Anti-Fairies and your reproductive systems are entirely different from ours." He held out his hands for the pup and waited for the High Count to take the lead again.

"Be certain we don't kill it by doing this," Anti-Cosmo insisted, pushing open the wooden door at the end of the next hallway. "Anti-Wanda and I have long awaited a child of our own, and it wouldn't really do if this one went dusty on us now. I don't expect we'll get another chance anytime soon."

"Sure."

Anti-Cosmo rubbed his stomach. "If it was born today, I suppose Anti-Wanda and I will have to get on that tonight, so let's hope we get through with this before the mating instinct switches to 'on', or there will be no stopping me. Literally nothing. If it needs to be, it's a power boost the universe cannot inhibit, no matter where she or myself is at the time. Oh, dear, I wish I could abuse that power on something else, but there's not an Anti-Fairy in the world who can resist it."

"Please stop talking. We have work to do."

But they both stopped talking when the fairy pup coughed and began to gasp. Its eyes slid shut and didn't open again.

"They didn't tie any magic lines into its core," the Head Pixie realized then, and Anti-Cosmo caught the quickened flutter in his wings. He twirled his wand and shrugged.

"Fairy-Cosmo is the father. What were you expecting?"

"And now it's asphyxiating." If he had been any creature besides a pixie, a note of panic might have crept into his voice. He shoved it towards Anti-Cosmo. "Here. Give it SHAMPAX. No- no, never mind. I doubt you've ever held a newborn Seelie Courter before today."

"I beg your pardon?"

Instead of explaining anything at all, H.P. lifted the round baby to his face and kissed its parted lips. The kiss went on, and Anti-Cosmo removed his monocle and squinted.

"Pardon, again? This is SHAMPAX?"

"Sharing Magic to Prevent Asphyxiation," one of the other pixies explained in usual monotone, leaning against the curve of an archway below with Anti-Juandissimo small and frumpy at his side. "He's draining his own magic supply to give it to the nymph."

Still perplexed, Anti-Cosmo squirmed until H.P. drew back his head. He wiped his lips clean and dry with his knuckles. Then he kissed the baby a second time. Anti-Cosmo hovered there, useless and bewildered.

"Anti-Fairies have no need to do anything of the sort. We cannot die while our opposites yet live, and we suck our magic supply from our counterparts through our core. I suppose… technically we would be capable of giving this SHAMPAX magic that way, d _rrr_ awing it out from our hosts, hm?"

H.P. hardly blinked as he lowered the baby, and its gaping mouth shut. The purple eyes fluttered open. It even smiled. "Never mind. This part is even less pleasant than the first, but I see I'll have to do it myself." Setting the baby on the floor, he unhinged his dome.

If Anti-Cosmo had been holding his favorite black cup to his mouth, he would have spurted tea everywhere. As it was, he simply snorted and hacked into his fist. "Oh- dear- Would you care for a p _rrr_ ivate room to do that?"

Several of the pixies, including the Head, twisted around and wrinkled their noses in puzzled sync. Like he was a pup for squealing and this  _wasn't anything new to them_.

"You- you on occasion open your dome in front of your  _employees_?"

"If I have the need, yes. My duties must come before social norms." H.P. reached above his open head, eyelids fluttering shut like curtains.

"Well, that's…" The High Count did his utmost to keep his face from flushing the same color as the baby's single curl of hair. "That's mildly inappropriate. Erm. If it bothers you, old chap, I can, er, see your core, you know."

He continued to hold his hands above his open head. "Yes, I imagine you can. Sanderson, hold my shoulder and ensure I don't crumple over onto the baby."

For one instant, the Head Pixie's eyes flared like moons. His pupils shrank to pen dots. They closed. His lips slipped and revealed two rows of stained teeth set together. It made Anti-Cosmo adjust his monocle. What was this strange power, that caused even the king of the Pixies to flinch with pain?

The moment passed. He opened his eyes, and they were glowing lavender. With his right hand, the Head Pixie slid his glasses further up his nose. Something in his left hand… wriggled. Reality distorted. The air rippled. The thing was a sort of cord or straw. Anti-Cosmo lifted his brows, and this time he didn't need to ask. So this was one of those magic lines that plugged into the energy field and kept his people's hosts alive and therefore their Anti-Fairies too.

Sanderson held out his hand with the air of one who had witnessed this many times before. The Head Pixie handed him the shifting strip and spent a moment blowing more magic into the baby's mouth, which had parted again with another gasp, before reaching above his head once more. He plucked a second time, and again cringed. Sanderson took that one too. When H.P. had snapped three lines from his own head, he took the others back and lifted open the baby's forehead dome.

Out of plain curiosity, Anti-Cosmo signaled to one of the other nearby pixies. "Why does he need three?"

The pixie beat his wings and flew up to join him. "Three is standard. Nymphs only have one large tie-spot. Stopping at one line is essentially begging for asphyxiation, two lines can slip out, and four is too crowded for the spot and leads to dragging the others down with it. With three you can braid, and weaving makes a stronger central tube."

"What happens if the Head Pixie drops them?"

"He… picks them up?"

"He can hardly see them, can't he?"

The pixie gave him a rumpled sideways glance. "You might see a little better yourself if you flip your eyes backwards into your field-sight, sir. The Head Pixie and Sanderson have theirs on. You can tell it by the way their sockets are glowing that light violet color."

"Ah. I've heard of it, but Anti-Fairies don't have field sight, chap. Because we don't need to perform complex birth  _rrr_ ituals like you Seelie Courters do, I would imagine it simply isn't an ability we're allowed to inherit."

The pixie actually removed his shades to stare, displaying lavender eyes identical to Sanderson's and the Head Pixie's. "Then… How do you  _mate_?"

Anti-Cosmo glanced away from Sanderson, who had picked up the baby to give it another round of SHAMPAX while the Head Pixie worked. "Pardon?"

" _I_  actually went to public school." He said it with such great pride, Anti-Cosmo half expected him to whip his diploma out from one of the inner pockets of his gray jacket.

" _You_? A pixie drone?"

"This was long ago. I was called a fairy then. When non-Anti-Fairies-"

"Seelie Courters."

"What?"

"My apologies. Force of habit. Continue. I'm curious."

"… When members of the Seelie Court mate, their lines thread together until they have one big shared tube that gives them both enough magic to go through with procreation. If they didn't link up, the resulting tingle-fritziness would snap all their lines from the energy field and kill the drake before they made it very far. The influx of warm magic stirs up the frozen eggs so one of them can be fertilized. It's kind of important. How does it work if your people don't have magical lines? Your drakes still have eggs, don't they? Er… your damsels, I mean?"

"You know an awful lot about the universe for a mere pixie." It made Anti-Cosmo scratch his left elbow and tongue his right cheek. "We don't get tingle-fritzy. And we mate upside-down, of course." Grateful to be the smarter one again, he flapped his bat wings hard for emphasis. "Warm magic  _rrr_ ises, but Anti-Fairy magic is naturally cold. That's why we can't stay upright for too long lest we get dizzy- rather than draw it from the surroundings through our pores and upward to our core, we pull it through the core we share with our host and it flows down through the rest of our bodies. Of course, this means it doesn't pool around our core unless we force it. Makes our magic weaker and us sick and cranky. So, to answer your mating question, when we're upside-down with our domes open, our magic spills downward. After it is in the air for several precise seconds, it warms and rises and our mate can catch it in her dome. P _rrr_ esto. Step two of copulation is complete."

The pixie blinked and flitted back to his sentry post with a shake of his head. Good riddance to it. It spoke proper English far too well for what he'd heard of its kind. Anti-Cosmo waited in silence as the Head Pixie's fingers completed what appeared to be an invisible braid. Sanderson briefly shut the pup's dome and held the thing to his mouth, and when he was finished and had popped it open again, the Head Pixie took it back and made another few tying motions. A moment or two later, the dome was shut for good. The pale violet glow in their eyes flickered away, and both of them sat back on their knees with their hands braced against the marble floor, and they were the ones panting.

Anti-Cosmo landed with a light pat one foot after the other and folded up his leathery wings. "Are you now in a fair condition, or will I be needing to attempt giving the pair of you your SHAMPAX?"

The Head Pixie held up one finger. Once another minute of crouching in silence had flickered by, during which the baby cooed and strained its wings, he opened his dull eyes again and said, "That isn't necessary. We'll both recover within half an hour. It simply takes a lot out of you."

"You clearly knew what you were doing, old sport. You've had pups before, haven't you?"

The Head Pixie stared at him, incredulous, as he pushed himself up to his feet. "For being Fairy-Cosmo's opposite, you're quite less intelligent than your brother at times, aren't you?"

Insulted, Anti-Cosmo stepped back. "I- I know you are all genetically identical. It's not as though there was ever anyone here to explain the details to me. I was a  _wee tad busy_  taking over my  _rrr_ ole as High Count from where Anti-Bryndin left off. There are hardly five hundred of your kind in all of the universe. That's badger dribble, chap. There are more subspecies of interplanetary pond scum. Literally  _nobody_  cares two flaps about you or your people beyond the cont _rrr_ ibutions you make to the business world. I always assumed you mated with some brownie damsel or something and then-"

"I'm not a brownie-kisser."

"… and then formulated clones of the resulting pup through pure magic every so often when you had an open position in your offices and enough energy to spare. They're simple-minded d _rrr_ ones of yours, bred only to serve. One wonders at times if they can so much as scrape together a single innovative idea amongst the lot of them. I know that much. Was Sander-?"

"Sanderson is not my son. I don't have any sons. Only employees." He clicked his fingers twice at Sanderson, whose expression hadn't changed throughout the discussion, and the smaller pixie scooped the fairy pup into his arms. Its eyes had opened, cheery and bright. "Now that the nymph will not be asphyxiating on us, where would you like us to bring it? You said you'd been designing a special sort of inner-magic-draining machine during the month Cosmo Prime was missing?"

Hmph. With a backwards toss of his hands, Anti-Cosmo lifted his wings again. "That is correct, H.P.  _Rrr_ ight this way. I've prepared quite a lovely nursery just for this purpose. Tally ho!"


End file.
